Giant NASA spider robots could 3D print lunar base

Would heat iron nanoparticles to create solid, ceramic-like blocks.

The first lunar base on the Moon may not be built by human hands, but rather by a giant spider-like robot built by NASA that can bind the dusty soil into giant bubble structures where astronauts can live, conduct experiments, relax or perhaps even cultivate crops.

We've already covered the European Space Agency's (ESA) work with architecture firm Foster + Partners on a proposal for a 3D-printed moonbase, and there are similarities between the two bases—both would be located in Shackleton Crater near the Moon's south pole, where sunlight (and thus solar energy) is nearly constant due to the Moon's inclination on the crater's rim, and both use lunar dust as their basic building material. However, while the ESA's building would be constructed almost exactly the same way a house would be 3D-printed on Earth, this latest wheeze—SinterHab—uses NASA technology for something a fair bit more ambitious.

The product of joint research first started between space architects Tomas Rousek, Katarina Eriksson and Ondrej Doule and scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), SinterHab is so-named because it involves sintering lunar dust—that is, heating it up to just below its melting point, where the fine nanoparticle powders fuse and become one solid block a bit like a piece of ceramic. To do this, the JPL engineers propose using microwaves no more powerful than those found in a kitchen unit, with tiny particles easily reaching between 1200 and 1500 degrees Celsius.

Nanoparticles of iron within lunar soil are heated at certain microwave frequencies, enabling efficient heating and binding of the dust to itself. Not having to fly binding agent from Earth along with a 3D printer is a major advantage over the ESA/Foster + Partners plan. The solar panels to power the microwaves would, like the moon base itself, be based near or on the rim of Shackleton Crater in near-perpetual sunlight.

"Bubbles" of binded dust could be built by a huge six-legged robot (OK, so it's not technically a spider) that can then be assembled into habitats large enough for astronauts to use as a base. This "Sinterator system" would use the JPL's Athlete rover, a half-scale prototype of which has already been built and tested. It's a human-controlled robotic space rover with wheels at the end of its 8.2m limbs and a detachable habitable capsule mounted at the top.

Here's a video of it dancing, because science:

ATHLETE Rover Busts a Move: A Dancing Robot

Athlete's arms have several different functions, dependent on what it needs to do at any point. It has 48 3D cameras that stream video to its operator either inside the capsule, elsewhere on the Moon or back on Earth, it's got a payload capacity of 300kg in Earth gravity, and it can scoop, dig, grab at and generally poke around in the soil fairly easily, giving it the combined abilities of a normal rover and a construction vehicle. It can even split into two smaller three-legged rovers at any time if needed. In the Sinterator system, a microwave 3D printer would be mounted on one of the Athlete's legs and used to build the base.

Rousek explained the background of the idea to Wired.co.uk: "Since many of my buildings have advanced geometry that you can't cut easily from sheet material, I started using 3D printing for rapid prototyping of my architecture models. The construction industry is still lagging several decades behind car and electronics production. The buildings now are terribly wasteful and imprecise—I have always dreamed about creating a factory where the buildings would be robotically mass-produced with parametric personalization, using composite materials and 3D printing. It would be also great to use local materials and precise manufacturing on-site."

He continued: "It's good to realize that we have this unique chance to jump from our atmosphere and go to the next evolutionary level—it's comparable with leaving the ocean and climbing down from the trees. I went to Strasbourg to study space architecture at the International Space University in France, where I formed the team with Ondrej Doule and Katarina Eriksson. Our friend there, Richard Rieber from NASA's JPL, is one of the co-authors of the 3D printing system based on the Athlete robot. We were inspired by their invention and immediately started designing architecture that would use this technology."

Sintering is quite cheap, in terms of power as well as materials, and an Athlete rover should be able to construct a bubble volume in only two weeks, Rousek estimates. He said: "It would have a very good cost-value ratio as you don't need to import as much material from Earth. The whole expandable module, with the membranes to cover the base when built, would be carried by the same rocket that would bring other modules of the outpost, but it can build a volume four times bigger than a rigid cylindrical module. Since we don't have the necessary transport capacity to the Moon at the moment, estimating a price now would be very inaccurate. As a comparison, the International Space Station has so far cost approximately $150bn (£99bn) but a lunar base could be designed much more cheaply with private companies."

Another benefit of sintering is that astronauts could use it on the surface of the Moon surrounding their base, binding dust and stopping it from clogging their equipment. Moon dust is extremely abrasive -- without natural weathering or erosion like on Earth, dust isn't ground down into smooth spheres. Instead it remains tiny yet jagged, perfect for getting into any exposed cracks, scratching lenses, wearing down airtight seals and becoming deeply embedded into human lungs. Former Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmidt has called the dust the biggest environmental issue on the Moon, even more so than radiation (which in SinterHab would be blocked by a combination of the Moon dust structure, "strategically located water tanks" and layers of inflatable polymers).

London-based space architect Rousek, director of A-ETC, has continued working on SinterHab with Doule and Eriksson since first proposing the idea in 2010 at the International Aeronautical Congress as a way of taking advantage of the Sinterator system. The design—now published in the journal Acta Astronautica—is based on the equilibrium found in bubbles. You might have noticed, the last time that you had a bubble bath, the way that groups of bubbles join together naturally to form a more solid structure -- that's exactly what SinterHab will look like. A bunch of rocky bubbles connected together, with cladding added later. Rousek explained: "The internal structure was selected to demonstrate how we can arrange the interior and create walls inside. The first version should probably have only a single volume to decrease the risk. Then we could think about a bigger module, which would use connected volumes."

A second version of SinterHab—SinterHab 2.0—is "currently being developed under the leadership of Ondrej Doule from the Florida Institute of Technology," Rousek said. "We plan to further develop the interior design, deployment and construction process and life-support system. We would like to also do research about possible spin-offs of such construction methods on Earth."

NASA is keen on figuring out a way to build a lunar base, and as one of several proposals being batted around inside the organization it's been used in a proposal for further development of sintering technology—and I, for one, welcome our new robo-spider space architect overlords.

Reading this article I knew what I was going to write in the comments; then I get gazumped by the last line... well played sir... well played....

The only worry I can see is; they say the moon dust is a big problem but don't really say how they'd get around that.

I think they are saying that the dust would be removed from the local area by the act of sintering it into the structures. Of course, I wonder what effect the dust would have on the spider-bug-sinterator mechanism as it worked? If I recall correctly, the dust on the Apollo missions was a cast-iron beeyotch in that it adhered to EVERYTHING, mostly through electrostatic attraction. Maybe that's the answer? Charge the surface of the machine to repel the stuff?

Finding ways of keeping the solar panels save from the Moon dust then we talk. Without the solar panels there won't be any electricity to heat the dust. This project is a no go.

I think they would have the panels on poles or some other kind of supporting structure that would keep them well-away from any danger of dust coatings. It's not like there are clouds of the stuff floating around, just waiting for unsuspecting solar panels to come along. Plus, if they can somehow use electrostatic repulsion on the panels, I suspect that would go a long ways towards keeping them clear of any dust that might happen to coat them.

As an aside, construction does give employment to the local population. Mass produced buildings via 3d printing will decrease that.I absolutely love the progress of science, but yeah, I am sometimes worried about jobs. Hope that I am a luddite and I am wrong.

As an aside, construction does give employment to the local population. Mass produced buildings via 3d printing will decrease that.I absolutely love the progress of science, but yeah, I am sometimes worried about jobs. Hope that I am a luddite and I am wrong.

Sure that is a common fear but there will be a need for people to maintain, program, and operate those devices. The make up of the industry will shift and holding on to old outdated jobs is a bigger burden.

As an aside, construction does give employment to the local population. Mass produced buildings via 3d printing will decrease that.I absolutely love the progress of science, but yeah, I am sometimes worried about jobs. Hope that I am a luddite and I am wrong.

The cost of moving pre-fabricated construction materials through 2 gravity wells would make a moonbase implausible at best. This means no jobs are being "lost" since the project would be a non-starter without building with lunar materials.

As an aside, construction does give employment to the local population. Mass produced buildings via 3d printing will decrease that.I absolutely love the progress of science, but yeah, I am sometimes worried about jobs. Hope that I am a luddite and I am wrong.

The cost of moving pre-fabricated construction materials through 2 gravity wells would make a moonbase implausible at best. This means no jobs are being "lost" since the project would be a non-starter without building with lunar materials.

Pretty sure that dbngshm was talking about the implications of this technology being used for building projects here on Earth.

As an aside, construction does give employment to the local population. Mass produced buildings via 3d printing will decrease that.I absolutely love the progress of science, but yeah, I am sometimes worried about jobs. Hope that I am a luddite and I am wrong.

Sure that is a common fear but there will be a need for people to maintain, program, and operate those devices. The make up of the industry will shift and holding on to old outdated jobs is a bigger burden.

And what makes you think that people who pour cement and erect skyscrapers are in any way equipped to maintain, program, and operate these autonomous construction vehicles? Or that the number of people who would do that are the same number that are needed currently?

Net job loss is not an unreasonable concern, as is the loss of jobs for people who's well-learned skills are no longer of value.

Reading this article I knew what I was going to write in the comments; then I get gazumped by the last line... well played sir... well played....

The only worry I can see is; they say the moon dust is a big problem but don't really say how they'd get around that.

I think they are saying that the dust would be removed from the local area by the act of sintering it into the structures. Of course, I wonder what effect the dust would have on the spider-bug-sinterator mechanism as it worked? If I recall correctly, the dust on the Apollo missions was a cast-iron beeyotch in that it adhered to EVERYTHING, mostly through electrostatic attraction. Maybe that's the answer? Charge the surface of the machine to repel the stuff?

One question I have is about when they say it has a payload capacity of 300KG in earth gravity. Does that mean that, while operating in earth gravity, it can lift 300KG, or does that mean that in lunar gravity it can lift what ways 300KG on earth? Maybe I'm overanalyzing it, I just read it as being possible to interpret it in either way.

JustAdComics wrote:

Evolution wrote:

Finding ways of keeping the solar panels save from the Moon dust then we talk. Without the solar panels there won't be any electricity to heat the dust. This project is a no go.

I think they would have the panels on poles or some other kind of supporting structure that would keep them well-away from any danger of dust coatings. It's not like there are clouds of the stuff floating around, just waiting for unsuspecting solar panels to come along. Plus, if they can somehow use electrostatic repulsion on the panels, I suspect that would go a long ways towards keeping them clear of any dust that might happen to coat them.

It would be rather trivial to do, honestly. Even something as simple as peelable layers of plastic that could be removed as they get scratched would be effective, cheap, and light. This is really not a problem that warrants serious concern, even less so when you consider that mounting them even a short distance from the main compound would be more than sufficient to completely eliminate any contamination. No atmosphere means nothing to get dust onto them in the first place, never mind any abrading action; if it's slightly apart from the ops area there'll be no activity to throw dust up on it.

I think the greater concern being described is the effects of the dust that gets tracked into the habitat areas, and so are in an atmosphere that can move them around and cause the abrading action in question. It would take a lot for dust kicked up by moving through it to add up to significant damage.

Sailor of Fortune wrote:

dbngshm wrote:

As an aside, construction does give employment to the local population. Mass produced buildings via 3d printing will decrease that.I absolutely love the progress of science, but yeah, I am sometimes worried about jobs. Hope that I am a luddite and I am wrong.

Sure that is a common fear but there will be a need for people to maintain, program, and operate those devices. The make up of the industry will shift and holding on to old outdated jobs is a bigger burden.

Precisely. As has happened throughout the last few centuries, the more menial jobs become less important, and so a proper education and skilled professions become more important. Notice how much of the western world is in service industries vs production; accountants are the new farmers (if you'll excuse some hyperbole in getting my point across).

This also stresses a real danger in the US, whose education system is still plunging downward and whose tuition costs have been increases at rates far in excess to inflation (which itself is far in excess to the average increase in income) for longer than the past three decades now. As progress continues logically, the lack of skilled workers will prove more and more detrimental to society. It's not the progress and how it displaces obsolete fields of employment that is the worry, it's the poor job being done of training people and getting them into the fields that ARE still needed (or newly created along with the progress.)

YetAnotherAnonymousAppellation wrote:

dbngshm wrote:

As an aside, construction does give employment to the local population. Mass produced buildings via 3d printing will decrease that.I absolutely love the progress of science, but yeah, I am sometimes worried about jobs. Hope that I am a luddite and I am wrong.

The cost of moving pre-fabricated construction materials through 2 gravity wells would make a moonbase implausible at best. This means no jobs are being "lost" since the project would be a non-starter without building with lunar materials.

The only significant gravity well involved is that of the earth's. The moon's equatorial gravity is about 16% that of the earth's, and really nothing to be concerned about (recall that the Apollo lander was more than sufficient to carry itself, its fuel and atmosphere, and two crew members, back up for a safe rendezvous with the command module, and getting out is a hell of a lot harder than landing safely; you only need to slow down to land safely, but you need to beat gravity entirely to get out). As has commonly been quoted and paraphrased, once you reach earth orbit, you're half-way to anywhere in the solar system (generally referring to total delta vee required for the mission; half of the delta vee for the whole mission is JUST reaching earth orbit).

That said, you're not wrong that it would be extremely expensive and inefficient. Totally plausible plausible from a technical standpoint, the barrier is time, cost, and effort and that is likely insurmountable from a POLITICAL and BUDGETARY standpoint. That's where tech like this comes into play and could be massively useful. It'd be just as useful planet-side, though, and the article itself addresses those applications and how one of the main teammembers first started working with it as an idea for how to produce things better on earth, not just in space.

Alfonse wrote:

Sailor of Fortune wrote:

dbngshm wrote:

As an aside, construction does give employment to the local population. Mass produced buildings via 3d printing will decrease that.I absolutely love the progress of science, but yeah, I am sometimes worried about jobs. Hope that I am a luddite and I am wrong.

Sure that is a common fear but there will be a need for people to maintain, program, and operate those devices. The make up of the industry will shift and holding on to old outdated jobs is a bigger burden.

And what makes you think that people who pour cement and erect skyscrapers are in any way equipped to maintain, program, and operate these autonomous construction vehicles? Or that the number of people who would do that are the same number that are needed currently?

Net job loss is not an unreasonable concern, as is the loss of jobs for people who's well-learned skills are no longer of value.

And what makes you think that we should inflate costs and intentionally stifle progress and improvement solely to support the high-school drop-outs working the menial side of the construction industry and incapable of more? Because you're only qualified to ask if people want fries with that burger we should stop working on ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency in the fast food industry?

I'm by no means a supporter of Ayn Rands batshit insane extreme of free market capitalism, but nor do I support the concept of intentionally keeping obsolete business models, industries, and types of employment on life support solely because someone was too incompetant to learn to do something needed. Will some be hurt in the process? Of course, and this is unavoidable, but just as any animal must adapt to changing conditions or go extinct, or monks copying manuscripts gave way to the printing press and then the photocopier, so too must these mortar-mixers learn something else that's actually needed once they're replaced by a machine that does it faster, better, and cheaper.

I think it might be cheaper to make kevlar double walled inflatable torus's you could drop on the moon. Cover it if you want with moon dirt, but inflate the double wall sections with hydrogen and you have your radiation shield built in.

I don't imagine that I'm unique in that experience. I think that a lot of writers have been aiming to make a similar prediction. 't Hooft largely makes the argument based on the lifting costs to the moon. Idea being that taking material is just so darned expensive that we need to build stuff that can build more stuff. Then he diverges into nonsense when he talks about how controlling them would be a challenge. No, communication and bandwidth would be a challenge, we could furnish sufficient numbers of people willing to control a tedious robot on the moon. Definitely not worried about that part.

In principle, if you could grow a robot army by only shipping electronics to the moon and letting the robots there create all of the mechanical stuff, that would actually be a valid route to a major presence. Still, we're not there yet. Someday. Someday.

I don't imagine that I'm unique in that experience. I think that a lot of writers have been aiming to make a similar prediction. 't Hooft largely makes the argument based on the lifting costs to the moon. Idea being that taking material is just so darned expensive that we need to build stuff that can build more stuff. Then he diverges into nonsense when he talks about how controlling them would be a challenge. No, communication and bandwidth would be a challenge, we could furnish sufficient numbers of people willing to control a tedious robot on the moon. Definitely not worried about that part.

In principle, if you could grow a robot army by only shipping electronics to the moon and letting the robots there create all of the mechanical stuff, that would actually be a valid route to a major presence. Still, we're not there yet. Someday. Someday.

You can also find a lot of relevant information and ideas in the Mard Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. It covers many of the proposals from the article, from manufactories to construct building materials from local resources to the use of water storage tanks and thick brick and dirt as a radiation barrier. It's widely regarded as an excellent model for collonization efforts, including by vissionaries such as the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

What is the maximum functional distance at which you could use microwaves to sinter the dust?

Would it be possible to use a satellite to (slowly, over many passes) sinter the top half-inch of a wide area (say, an acre or two) in order to provide a safe landing zone which could be used without the dust kickup associated with landing on unprepared terrain?

Just a thought. If anyone could chime in, I'd be interested in the practicalities (or lack thereof) of this idea.

Well, that would be a stretch. But I would be happy to know they aren't powering these little MoonCity Sims using SimCity 5 (see the other article on that). On the other hand, they could just release this all to us, and we could create real cities up there for them! Think of the multiplayer aspects!

And best of all, we also know from the gun article that the moon can be completely pre-populated with weapons before we arrive to ensure us of any gun rights that may be discovered on the moon. Or take out those who disagree. After all, it's all the same technology, isn't it?

As an aside, construction does give employment to the local population. Mass produced buildings via 3d printing will decrease that.I absolutely love the progress of science, but yeah, I am sometimes worried about jobs. Hope that I am a luddite and I am wrong.

The cost of moving pre-fabricated construction materials through 2 gravity wells would make a moonbase implausible at best. This means no jobs are being "lost" since the project would be a non-starter without building with lunar materials.

Pretty sure that dbngshm was talking about the implications of this technology being used for building projects here on Earth.